There’s a thought that’s been growing in the back of my mind for months now.

What if the genocide in Gaza is serving another purpose?

Not its only purpose. Not its most obvious purpose. But a function nonetheless: distraction.

Because while the entire world is emotionally consumed by one of the most horrific and divisive human rights violations of our lifetime, something else is happening almost unnoticed.

Data centres are rising everywhere.
AI infrastructure is expanding at breakneck speed.
The tech oligarchs are positioning themselves for a future that most ordinary people still don’t fully understand.

And I have come to the belief that they understand exactly what’s coming.

For centuries, ordinary people were economically necessary for our labour. The system exploited us, yes, but it still needed us. Workers built the roads, stacked the shelves, drove the trucks, wrote the code, cleaned the offices, delivered the food, and kept the machine running.

We were assets. And, like parasites, the people at the top lived lives made possible by feeding on us.

But AI changes that equation.

Not gradually. Not eventually. Radically.

The people building these systems are openly pursuing automation at a scale never before seen in human history. They speak in the language of “efficiency” and “innovation,” but beneath all the corporate buzzwords lies a brutal reality:

A future where human labour becomes increasingly obsolete.

And when millions, perhaps billions, of people are no longer economically useful to the system, what happens then?

That is the question nobody in power seems willing to confront honestly.

Because once people realise they are being replaced, discarded, and transformed from assets into liabilities, resistance becomes inevitable. People do not quietly accept irrelevance. They do not calmly watch their futures disappear while a handful of billionaire technocrats consolidate unprecedented power.

So what do you need in order to push through a transformation this enormous?

Distraction. Division. Emotional exhaustion.

And Gaza, as well as Iran and Lebanon, provides all three.

Whether someone supports Israel or Palestine, the conflict consumes them. It dominates conversations, news cycles, friendships, protests, universities, elections, and social media feeds. Entire populations are locked into a permanent state of outrage, grief, tribalism, and psychological overload.

It is impossible to look away.

Meanwhile, behind the smoke, the foundations of a new world are being poured in concrete and fibre-optic cable.

New AI data centres.
New surveillance systems.
New automation infrastructure.
New monopolies over intelligence itself.

The future is arriving while humanity is staring at the fire.

To be clear: this is not saying the suffering in Gaza is fake. It is horrifyingly real. Nor is this claiming every event in the world is controlled by one secret mastermind pulling strings in a dark room.

Power doesn’t work that neatly.

But history shows us that elites routinely exploit moments of crisis to consolidate control, expand infrastructure, transfer wealth upward, and reshape society while the public is distracted, divided, or afraid.

And right now, we are living through the largest technological transformation in modern history, with almost no meaningful democratic conversation about what kind of future is actually being built.

Who owns the AI?
Who controls the infrastructure?
Who benefits from automation?
What happens to the people displaced by it?
What happens when corporations no longer need workers, only consumers and obedience?

These are civilisation-level questions.

Yet most people are too emotionally battered by endless crises to even begin asking them.

That may not be an accident.

And if we continue sleepwalking through this moment, we may wake up in a world where the decisions have already been made for us.